Early detection of performance degradation of subsystems of a vehicle system may provide for more efficient operation, control, and repair of such subsystems. Early intervention can avoid high cost system and subsystem level failures and repairs, and may even prevent catastrophic failures.
Vehicle operators may identify performance or economy issues associated with the vehicle system, such as low power or poor performance, but such issues may not be of a nature that results in failure or the setting of a trouble/fault code in a diagnostic system of the vehicle. While performance issues may be able to be identified through testing and inspection of the various systems, these approaches often involve significant loss of service time and/or increased labor costs, and in some cases may result in misidentification or the inability to identify the subsystems or component causing the performance issues.
Engine and vehicle subsystems may include diagnostic monitors that trigger a fault/trouble code when performance has severely degrades. However, not all service events generate fault/trouble codes, and it is not practical for service technicians to be able to determine normal operational characteristics from existing diagnostic monitors for every type of subsystem and application. Furthermore, without a trouble/fault code, technicians may lack sufficient information to know which subsystems to investigate. Thus, there remains a need for further contributions in this area of technology.